D3 Wizard Fresh Level 70 Guide S20 | 2.6.8

Leveled your Wizard to 70 already? It is time to go and get your free set for this season! We will be talking about some Wizard builds that will ensure that you get Haedrig’s gift the soonest and lead to your endgame as a Fresh 70 Wizard.

Crafting a Reaper’s Wraps at the beginning of your L70 journey is a huge step up in quality of life without relying on RNG. Plans drop from any Torment Malthael!

S17 Season of Nightmares and YOU

This season, all characters have, passively, the effects of the Legacy of Nightmares set, which increases your power and defense for each ancient item you have equipped AS LONG AS NO OTHER SET BONUS IS ACTIVE.

While this has many applications for later on, this does not affect your leveling and early game very much at all, so I will not really discuss it in this page.

My only advice is to wear any and all ancients you can while you have no set bonus. Or you can even sacrifice the 2/4 set bonuses of weaker sets if you have 1/2 ancient items – if only to speed up the seasonal journey a bit.

Fresh 70 Wizard: Getting the Free Set!

Click below to reveal the instructions you need for each step:

Firebird is one of the EASIEST FREE SETS to “blaze” past this stage of the game. The 4pc set bonus is absurd. DEFENSE IS A HUGE PROBLEM THOUGH!

IMPORTANT: Setting up!

You don’t need to have legendary items with you to get your free set. Just fixing up the yellows you picked up or crafted will surely help you “wizzzz” by the seasonal journey entries.

DEFENSE WILL BE YOUR ONLY ISSUE FOR A LONG TIME.
STACK DEFENSE AND PROGRESS FAST. NO NEED TO BE GREEDY.

Wizards are INT characters, meaning you get low Armor but high Resists! You need to be mindful of your defensive stats, especially for Firebird’s. How to solve this? Roll Armor on Chest, Legs, Boots, Shoulders, and Belt. These will also work well when Ice Armor-Crystallize is part of your build. A NOTE ON GEMS: Red and Green give ARMOR which is much needed for you.

2H Mace: The magic stats here are INT, LIFE PER HIT or SOCKETS with Amethyst for that Life per Hit. Basically, LpH will save your butt early on.

Fire%: get this on Bracers and Necklace. As the set name implies, damage is depended on Wizard’s fire skills. 2 rerolls for up to 40% damage is a tiny effort for such large returns.

Boots: INT, Armor, and Disintegrate% (or rerollable Skill %) should be in here. Since we will be using Disintegrate for the foreseeable future, roll this on your free set piece asap.

Belt: this thing here is gonna bring in huge defensive stats for you – and that’s exactly what we need. INT VIT ARMOR LIFE is the stack you’re looking for.

Rings and Amulet: you’ll need SOCKETS on these in preparation for legendary gems. But before then, feel free to roll and get temporary defensive stats.

Temporary pieces – Chest, legs, shoulder, gloves, boots: While you don’t have your free pieces, make sure you get “decent” yellows with great DEFENSIVE stats. Survival will be your only roadblock.

Save any good 1-hander / source you pick up along the way. Switch to this if it’s more OP than you’re current 2hander. Etched Sigil is what you’re hoping for.

You got pets? Well, let one of them loose to go pick up those coins! You’re gonna need all the moolah to upgrade crafters.

We will still use the same build as the Fresh 70 No Set Build
since the 2-piece bonus we get from Firebird’s is irrelevant.

Chapter 3: a couple of entries here needs to be completed on Master difficulty but the bountiescan still be done on Hard, if you haven’t completed this yet. Just go straight to the bounty requirements and ignore any stragglers.

Complete on Master Difficulty:

Nephalem Rift

Urzael – Act V, Westmarch Heights

Araneae – Act I, Caverns of Araneae

if you need to up your defenses, use Galvanizing Ward for one of your passive skills

Do the other entries for this chapter, collect your 2nd free set and let’s start ticking off entries for the next chapter.

Season Journey Chapter 4: Getting the 6 piece

If you slacked off on defense – you’re gonna feel it now.Try to get Life per Hit and Armor, as specified in the setup tab above.

Hydra – Blazing (Mammoth): THIS ONE IS YOUR CHOICE but I found Hydra to be the most stable and best for any type of content.

You really don’t need to “3 burn” everything. Mostly only Elites.

While we all know getting and beating GR20 is the main event here, there’s still quite a bit we have to do to get there.

Chapter 4: Your Wizard shouldn’t have any issues in terms of damage at this time so it’s time to increase difficulty to Torment 1, which you need to complete one neph as a requirement. This should also be your minimum level to farm your items. Let’s go through the other entries first before we talk about GR20 (saving it for next clicky).

Cleared this using various sets of yellow items. Most 4pc sets struggle with DPS, but Firebird ain’t one of ’em. Play carefully and you’ll get it done.

Repeated deaths is the only way you’re gonna fail. Stack defensive passives. I tried the run using UA instead of Audacity and still had more than enough time. While you may survive this without Armor or LpH – it’s not worth the risk. Put amethyst in your weapon if you have to. Get all the healing skills from your Templar!

DON’T STOP TO KILL EVERY WHITE: Loosely search for elites while only turning back to fight clumps of whites. Elites are especially juicy for us since the infinite burn makes short work of them. If you fall into the trap of “killing every singular dude”, you WILL FAIL.

The numbers above DO NOT take into consideration Legendary Gems and Gear. This should serve as your baseline before conquering this seasonal journey entry. Given how badly I gave myself a disadvantage – this should be nothing for you.

Fresh 70 Wizard: 6pc Free Set Build

Quick value note: Firebird 6 piece is ALL ABOUT KILLING ELITES. Change your playstyle accordingly. You can even make elites follow you while they’re burning so you can obliterate random whites along the way. You’ll see soon enough.

Firebird is an open set and I can’t possibly account for all the legendary drops you get.Customizing your build to fit high-power legendaries will be key.Below I will put a table of common Wizard “weapon pairs”.

Our goal is to get a brainless third fire skill – most easily done with Etched Sigil. I will NOT recommend an Archon build path. It’s NO GOOD for early speed farming,
which should be our immediate goal.

If you’re curious – I will be nudging you towards a“Etched Sigil + Deathwish“ Meteor build. It’s the most reasonable speedfarmy build you can easily come up with early on, that can do some serious work in high GR.

You’ll learn more in the coming chunks of this guide. But for now, it’s time to power up. Legendary Gems and Key Items are discussed in the next sections. But you have quite a good summary via the table just up there.

A quick review before proceeding…

Keep these important things in mind as you progress!

Non-set pieces

Hopefully, you learned a bit of our goals above. I will state it again, Firebird’s revolves around killing elites – actively seeking them out and killing them.

You do not have to wear all 7 piecesfeel free to unequip one if you find a good filler item!

1H/2H Mace: Since Firebird is a 7 piece set with an offhand, having a good 1-hander isn’t a bad idea. The source gives +Fire% which is welcome. Otherwise, a mace of any kind is what you’re after.

Get the proper Armor rolls NOW – Like mentioned a few times before, INT gives Resists and not Armor. Resists are amazing, but neglecting Armor is like ignoring an entire facet of our defense. INT characters usually have Armor buffing skills which require a high base Armor rating to shine (ie Energy Armor – all runes, Ice Armor – Crystallize).

Self-healing is impossible to obtain as a Wizard using base skills. Life per hitand Shielding are our only form of sustainability. Life per Hit on weapon (or amulet) is AMAZING in the early game! Abuse it now while you’re in… well… the early game.

Fire%shows up on Bracers and Amulets (normally). As you may have noticed, it also rolls on your offhand, Firebird’s Eye. Up to 60% damage bonus. Damn.

Skill% – Honestly, this will evolve over time so just try to get INT VIT ARMOR SKILL%, where Skill% is the rerolled stat so you can be flexible. If I had a great pair of boots I would try to get Meteor% on it, I suppose to prepare for mid/end game.

Arcane Power on Critical Strike is a unique Wizard stat that rolls on Sources and Wizard Hats. It’s a good idea to have this on your source, so you can free up Familiar-Arcanot. Of course, it won’t work very well if your Crit Chance sucks.

Getting the “correct” stats has a much higher impact vs.
getting the “perfect” stats, for now.

Generally speaking remove useless stats like:

Life Regen: The worst stat in the game.

ALLRES: Like I mentioned, we have too much of it – take Armor.

Reduced Resource Cost: Crutchy, and quickly becomes useless.

ASPD: is for end-game tuning. Not really an issue at this stage.

Excessive CDR: It’s a good, but more of a “refinement stat” – take core stats for now.

For good stats like:

INT + VIT: our core stats.

Armor > Life: our premier defensive stat!

Crit related stats: the best endgame offensive stats.

Life per hit: Good for wizards in the early/midgame. Roll one or two on temp gear.

Gaining Power!

Now we have to gain as much power, as quickly as possible.

Legendary Gems

This is the easiest way to gain power simply because acquiring them has little to no RNG. Getting 3 of your best gems will increase your power dramatically in a short time span.

Click on the tabs to see Firebird’s “Big 3” gems and “others”.

Firebird Fresh 70 - 3 GemsOther gems?

Get these three to L25 ASAP:

Taeguk is godlike for any build that relies on channeling skills. It helps us out with Armor and damage – you can’t ask for more! If you ever transition into a non-channeling build, use it for augments!

Bane of the Powerfulis pure value. For 25 levels you already reach the maximum damage potential of the gem! It plays nicely into our style of elite genocide.

YOU NEED DEFENSE RIGHT NOW!

Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard is probably the best one for you in the extreme early game, and will comfortably pad your survivability until your build matures a bit. Don’t worry about wasted upgrades as you’ll be using it for augments once you feel like you’ve “graduated” from it.

Any other gems worth it?

Bane of the Trapped is a basic DPS gem that is a huge upgrade for most if not all builds. It’s not so relevant early on as we have glaring defense issues. Never bad to own one.

Bane of the Stricken is mandatory once you’re at the “limits”. It’s worth investing into, once RG’s life is well into the trillions. I digress – this is a fresh 70 guide after all.

Esoteric Alteration is the “Stricken” of the defensive gems. Sometimes you just have to reliably survive in order to clear – and this is probably the gem for you.

Do nephs and GRs until you get your gems and level them up to 25. Personally, I tried to make this process as quick as possible doing Neph>GR>Neph>GR in a chain until I got what I want.

Playing the Build & Adjustments

Now that you have the base “power level” of your 6 set and gems, let’s take a short time to show you how to manipulate your build depending on what aspect of your current setup is weak. Simple skill, rune, and passive changes are listed below –

You can take this further – gather mobs, ignite elite, kill mobs – CONTINUE ALONG YOUR WAY WHILE THE ELITE IS BURNING. Killing any random stragglers AS THE ELITE BURNS AWAY (The DoT is infinite!) – then pick up the balls when they do die!

There’s not much to be said about the mechanical finesse to play this flavor of Firebird. It’s more an adjustment of playstyle/thought and decision making within rifts.

Feel free to experiment for your third burn source – even if I recommend Hydra (followed by Wave of Force), there’s a ton of viable ones. I chose Hydra since you don’t need to stop channeling Disintegrate. As long as you have three fire sources – you’re good as gold.

Again, I’m not recommending an Archon build path because the build is way too fine tuned and requires a metric ton of support items. It makes no sense to jump straight into it.

More offense or Arcane Power needed?

For resource gain, there’s a ton of ways to get more AP. In our base kit though, you shouldn’t look further than Familiar-Arcanot. It’s “passive” and gives a ton. Any more is overkill. (If you need the skill slot, the best AP passive is Astral Presence).

Arcane Power on Critical Strikewill solve all your problems later on. This Wizard only stat shows up on Sources and Wizard Hats.

Storm Armor-Power of the Storm should only be considered for speedfarming weak content. It’s the best Arcane Power management skill, but comes at a heavy cost of being a non-defensive armor choice. Use at your own risk.

There’s a whole host of items to help you here, most notably Cindercoat. However, AP isn’t really a huge issue in our build.

——

Damage? If you need more damage, there are a lot of ways to get that up! Just keep in mind that it won’t interrupt our “Three burn spells”. We currently stack full up on defensives to progress reliably, so we’re not using many offensive options in our build.

Audacity is the best DPS passive, followed by the well-rounded Unwavering Will. This pair is oft used side by side in the later game iterations of many Wizard builds.

Familiar – Sparkflint gives 10% damage, and is a fire spell! It’s pewpew contributes to our burn as well! However, it’s unreliable against large mobs and losing Arcanot in the early game is a significant loss. If you don’t need Arcanot – this becomes juicy.

Glass Cannon is a solid boost that comes at an obvious cost. It’s a great “thoughtless damage boost” for non-threatening speedfarm content.

Conflagration is not bad for multiplayer scenarios with more than 1 DPS player.

Power Hungry is solid, but a little more narrow than Audacity in practice. Obviously, they don’t work with each other, so I’d rather take the latter.

Long story short, between Audacity and Unwavering Will, that’s a 40% damage increase. Other sources aren’t very practical in the early game, but at least you have an idea now.

More defense needed?

Defense is seen as self-healing and damage reduction.

I crammed as much defense as I could in the base build. Many of these are already
part of the basic setup. I’ll discuss them and a few more options.

Wizards have no innate self-heal – they rely on shields. Which is why Life per Hit is valuable in the early game – going shield heavy isn’t a luxury we can go for right now!

Shielding comes in many forms, but Galvanizing Ward is arguably the best – it allows you to have 1.6x your toughness before engaging and very easy to reset mid-fight via Teleport-Wormhole. Learning to abuse Galvanizing Ward will be important later on.

Unstable Anomaly is a free death mechanic. Between this and Firebird’s 2pc, you have a lot of leeway for messing up.

Ice Armor-Crystallize is one of our best defensive skills. But it will only shine
once you have good armor rolls and gear in general. It’s our late-game armor of choice.
Oh, check out Halo of Arlyse… right.

More mobility needed?

If you need to speed bounties early on or just clear weak nephs faster.

Chest: Cindercoat is a great filler but is ultimately a crutch. It rolls with Fire% so it’s not bad to equip. It helps with Arcane Power if that’s an issue for you. Aquila Cuirass comes out here too, which CAN WORK given SPECIFIC SETUPS – it’s worth sacrificing a defensive passive or skill to facilitate “Infinite AP” to trigger Aquila Cuirass consistently.

Bridging to the End-game

So you skipped a whole chunk of the powering up phase with the free set. Now what? Like I always say, “Speedfarming first before pushing GR’s”. So, convert what you have NOW to be as speedfarmy as possible, first.

I’ve been following this guide for about a week now and compared to “competitors” builds, I find this one the most enjoyable. But I’ve seen to hit a rough spot, and I’m stuck hovering between T5-T7. Unfortunately I didn’t come accross this guide until I already progressed a little bit so my rolls aren’t perfect. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Well that would first depend on your personal goals. If you’re “stuck”, you should first find out where you’re progressing. What do you envision it is your goal this season would be? The free set is meant to be a free set, and you don’t need to STICK with it to the end – the build entailed in the fresh 70 guide will help you along to reach to “point of freedom”. Let me know what exactly is keeping you down? Survivability? Speed in clearing? What’s your goals this season?